Review: The Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Hardcover, US, 418 pages

Published September 27th 2011 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

I’m not one to throw around the term Mary Sue, but… Mary Sue.  Mary Sue Mary Sue Mary Sue.  MARY SUE LIKE WOAH.  Fo’ rizzle.  What makes her a Mary Sue, you might ask?  Per Wiktionary, it is defined as a fictional character, usually female and especially in fanfic, whose implausible talents and likeableness weaken the story.  Karou fits this bill, minus the bit about fanfiction.  She is graceful, beautiful, smart, physically strong and tough, idealized by her classmates as an artist in an art school, and a bunch of other positive traits.  However, you can have a “flawless” character and still make it work.  For example, June in Legend by Marie Lu is a prodigy, but cocky and impulsive.  Another example is Clara from Unearthly by Cynthia Hand, where in the book it is a problem how she is too perfect.  I read almost half of The Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and not one issue arose from how perfect Karou was.  Seriously, Karou is not a real person, there is no confusion over that.  The issue for me was that she couldn't be a real person.  Because perfect people spontaneously combust in real life -- everyone knows that.

For me, her perfection weakened the story.  I couldn’t connect to her.  I like characters to have problems other than external ones; some inner conflict is much loved.  Maybe it developed later in the story, and I really went back and forth with finishing the book.  It boiled down to me thinking that the promise of better was not worth it.  A book should be able to hold my attention and make me care within two hundred pages.  Since it didn’t, I decided it wasn’t worth my time.  There are too many books to read, and no time to waste on a book that I may have to struggle the rest of the way through.

I do love the use of chimeras, though.  Chimeras are not everywhere in YA lit so far (but who knows, maybe they’re the next mermaids), and I wanted to like this book based on that fact alone.  But even the underused mythological creatures combined with the mystery forming around them in the story were not enough to pull me in.  Even sitting here thinking of the premise, I’m like, “Why don’t you like it?  I mean, read that synopsis again.  There’s something wrong with you, Momo.”  Because I do often talk to myself using third person.  Aloud.  Anyway, I think Karou’s lack of imperfections repelled me from the book.  And it is just so sad.

This book is much loved, but it isn’t for everyone.  Maybe it’s for everyone except me, and that’s fine.  But here’s my opinion, internet.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Final Thought: 2 out of 5 sparkly perfect toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Review: A Shimmer of Angels by Lisa M. Basso

Sixteen-year-old Rayna sees angels, and has the medication and weekly therapy sessions to prove it. Now, in remission, Rayna starts fresh at a new school, lands a new job, and desperately tries for normalcy. She ignores signs that she may be slipping into the world she has tried so hard to climb out of. But these days, it’s more than just hallucinations that keep Rayna up at night. Students are dying, and she may be the only one who can stop it. Can she keep her job, her sanity, and her friends from dying at the hands of angels she can't admit to seeing?

Paperback, 321 pages

Expected publication: January 29th 2013 by Month9Books, LLC

(summary grabbed from GoodReads)

In writing, there's a term called the suspension of disbelief, which is if you can fuse "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative (definition grabbed from Wikipedia).  This means you can make something fantastical seem like it could be possible as long as everything else in the story is accurate and the abnormal or paranormal elements fit into the normal.  This is the big problem with A Shimmer of Angels: my suspension of disbelief was shattered.

The angel mythos was not the issue -- as Lisa M. Basso fit that into the world without a hiccup -- the issue was the way the mental health system was portrayed.  Rayna's mental stability is a big part of the book and it is talked about a lot.  It gets mentioned every few paragraphs in the beginning.  The problems were that everything that was said about it was not based in current reality and researched poorly.  For example, we are told in the beginning that Rayna was locked up for three years in a mental clinic she refers to as the S.S. Crazy, but has been released and is going to high school.  A couple huge questions arise from just that: 1.) Why was Rayna locked up for three years? and 2.) how is she in her appropriate grade when it is implied she hasn't gone to school during those three years?  There are no answers to either of these within the book, other than Rayna was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  The answer to question 2.) would be simple: she wouldn't be in her normal grade. 

There was little to no back-story to Rayna's diagnosis or treatment, and the problem with that is the procedure for being admitted is a bit more complicated than simply, "I see things, therefore I'm crazy," go to a psychiatrist, he confirms, "Yes, you're crazy," gives stamp of approval for schizophrenia, and lock up the patient indefinitely and drug her to oblivion.  It doesn't work like that.  Actually, to be admitted, you have to be considered a danger to yourself or others, or it has to be seen as beneficial to the patient’s treatment to remove them from the normal stresses of everyday life.  Rayna may have fallen under the latter category, but definitely not the first.  In fact, a lot of the experiences Rayna describes would be accurate for a combative or suicidal patient, such as being put in restraints and watched 24/7.  But Rayna is neither of those.  Furthermore, according to her own accounts, Rayna is nothing but a model patient.

Rayna's mental state was just as important as the fact that there were angels in San Francisco.  It affected everything within the book and was potentially talked about more than the angels themselves.  Actually when I think about it, there was not a lot of background on the Angels, their hierarchy, or any of the like.  They did discuss fallen angels, and that's about it from my memory.

"But Momo, this is fiction," you may be saying.  Yes this is fiction, but good fiction is still grounded in reality, which makes it relatable to the reader.  This distance from reality made it impossible for me to get into the book.  I didn't care for what was happening, I didn't care for the characters, I didn't care about anything really.  I briefly searched on the internet the basic laws regarding minors in the state of California and found plenty of information that countered the events in A Shimmer of Angels.  That's all it took was a brief search, and I'm not even writing a novel about a schizophrenic girl -- I'm writing an angry review about a novel about a schizophrenic girl.

Final Thought: 1 out of 52 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Review: Angel Burn by L. A. Weatherly

They're out for your soul.
And they don't have heaven in mind...

Willow knows she's different from other girls, and not just because she loves tinkering with cars. Willow has a gift. She can look into the future and know people's dreams and hopes, their sorrows and regrets, just by touching them. she has no idea where this power comes from. But the assassin, Alex, does. Gorgeous, mysterious Alex knows more about Willow than Willow herself does. He knows that her powers link to dark and dangerous forces and that he's one of the few humans left who can fight them. When Alex finds himself falling in love with his sworn enemy, he discovers that nothing is as it seems, least of all good and evil.

Hardcover, 449 pages

Published May 24th 2011 by Candlewick (first published September 30th 2010)

(provided by GoodReads)

I actually have a prejudice against angel books for absolutely no reason. If I'm looking for new books to add to my wish list and I see it is about angels, chances are I will click out of the page right then and there. However, I was reading reviews on The Midnight Garden and was actually intrigued by this one. So I thought "hey, why not?"

I was pleasantly surprised. A modern day road trip novel traveling from coast to coast... while on the run from evil angels. Honestly, the book read like an action movie (but in a good way), complete with explosions, chase scenes, and helicopter rides. One thing you don't get out of an action movie, though, is the poetic prose of L. A. Weatherly. 

It's not the greatest book I've ever read, but far from the worst. Good enough to make me rescind my angel-book-prejudice (for now).

Final thought: 16 out of 23 toadstools

This review is also available on GoodReads